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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25739356">Mercy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana'>irisdouglasiana</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last Kingdom (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Missing Scene, failson extraordinaire, set in 3.7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:22:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,833</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25739356</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alfred was crowned, they called him God’s king. But to Aethelwold, he is England’s god. And England’s god requires sacrifices of his own.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mercy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.</em> – Matthew 5:29</p>
<hr/>
<p>When Alfred arrives in his chambers, it is without warning or announcement. He waves away Beocca, who hovers anxiously behind him like a mother hen, and fixes his cold gaze on Aethelwold. “You were with fever for four days,” he says. “But it seems you will live after all.”</p>
<p>The voice is coming from his right side—his blind side. He has to turn his head to look at the king, though even that small movement is excruciating. The space where his eye used to be burns, and the skin around the socket feels scorched and raw. His voice comes out as a faint rasp. “You must be disappointed, Lord.”</p>
<p>“If I wanted you dead, it would already be done.”</p>
<p><em>True enough.</em> Aethelwold gingerly touches the bandage they wrapped around his head and his fingers come away sticky with blood. “When I was among the Danes, I learned something about their religion,” he says as he sits up carefully in bed. “As you know, one must grasp the mind of the heathen in order to defeat him. And do you know what I learned? I learned that their gods eat and drink, and maim and kill each other, and demand blood sacrifices. They are not so different from men after all.”</p>
<p>The king looks annoyed. “Does this story have a point?”</p>
<p>He somehow manages to smile. “When you were crowned, they called you God’s king. I think, rather, that you are England’s god. And England’s god requires sacrifices of his own.”</p>
<p>“Was it not enough to attempt treason? Now you must blaspheme as well?”</p>
<p>“What, will you cut out my tongue next?” He watches Alfred press his hand against the wall and stagger slowly over to the chair near the bed, and he realizes that if the king collapses in his room he will certainly be blamed: Aelswith will take his head long before Alfred wakes up.</p>
<p>“Aethelwold,” the king says as he settles into the chair. It is a warning.</p>
<p>He lets out an almost hysterical giggle, unable to help himself. He has already abased himself; he has cast aside his dignity and pleaded and begged. He cannot weep in front of Alfred. He will not weep in front of Alfred. “Thank you, Lord, for the kindness and mercy you have shown me,” he says instead. “I shall take a lesson from it. Indeed, I shall carry it everywhere I go.”</p>
<p>The king regards him coolly. “I told you before that everything I do, I do for the good of Wessex,” he says.</p>
<p>“You once said you would kill me if you deemed it for the good of Wessex.” He had stood there in front of all the combined treasure of Wessex and Mercia, the price for his cousin’s safe return, and in his mind he weighed his own worth. It had amounted to very little. “Perhaps you have forgotten. I never have.”</p>
<p>Alfred raises his eyebrows. “I know you lied to me and to the witan. I was advised by more than one person that I should execute you; that your offenses have been grave and numerous and there was every reason to believe you would continue to be a threat. That to leave you alive would endanger my own son and show me to be weak.”</p>
<p>“The words of my sweet aunt, no doubt.”</p>
<p>“Quiet,” the king snaps. “You are alive, are you not? They were right on all counts; you would be far less trouble to me dead. Your father—”</p>
<p>“My father!” There, again, is that same high-pitched laugh: he hates the sound of it, how weak it must make him seem. “Do not tell me how disappointed he would be. I was never the son he thought he deserved.”</p>
<p>“He was a stern man,” Alfred concedes. “He understood his duty to his country.”</p>
<p>He has a vision, suddenly, of himself as a small boy, shield and wooden sword slippery in his hands, flat on his back and shrinking in terror as Steapa roared in his face for him to stand up and take it like a man. Instead, he had cried, and only then did he realize his father had been watching the entire time, his lips pursed together in disapproval. In the worst of his fever dreams, he imagined the old king standing in the corner, watching him still.</p>
<p>“He made jokes that I could not really be his son and he did not care if I heard him,” he says bitterly. He knows he should stop but somehow he is beyond caring. “It hardly mattered what I did. If I was only ever going to be a disappointment, then I might as well get some enjoyment out of it. I might as well be the wretch he believed me to be.”</p>
<p>“Aethelwold—”</p>
<p>“He died and I was not there, I could not tell him—” <em>Stop talking, you fool</em>, he tells himself, but he cannot, he has never been able to stop himself. “You said you sent for me that day but could not find me. Was that a lie?”</p>
<p>Alfred runs his hand across his beard. “I sent men to your rooms, and that was all. I did not instruct them to look elsewhere, which was unchristian of me,” he says at last. “But your father did not ask for you either.”</p>
<p>Aethelwold looks down and fiddles with the edge of the blanket. He wants nothing more than to hit him. Then again, the price for striking a king is the removal of the offending hand, so he will have to settle for getting very, very drunk later. “Forgive me, Lord, but I am tired,” he says abruptly. “What do you want? Am I to swear more oaths to Edward; am I to be sent back to a monastery under lock and key? What more do you require?”</p>
<p>Alfred lets out a sigh, and for once, he looks away first. “I require nothing. You are forgiven. I merely…I am dying, Aethelwold, and I wish it had not come to this. If you failed in your duty to me, so did I in my duty towards you. And for that I am very sorry indeed.”</p>
<p>He can feel his eye prickling with tears and he turns his head away, choking back a sob. It takes him a long moment before he can find his voice. “Too late for us both, I’m afraid,” he finally says.</p>
<p>Alfred reaches out to clasp his hand, and Aethelwold jerks away from him without thinking. He had done the same at the witan—placed his hands around Aethelwold’s and offered his forgiveness before having him dragged off to be maimed. Now he withdraws his hand and slowly gets to his feet, gripping the back of the chair for balance.</p>
<p>“You were correct when you said it is necessary to study the heathen in order to defeat him,” Alfred says. “I sought to learn something about their religion as well. The pagans believe their lives are ruled by fate; that no man can escape his destiny. In this view, you and I were set on this destructive course long ago, for reasons beyond our control.”</p>
<p>“There is perhaps some comfort in the idea.”</p>
<p>“Except we are not pagans, and our choices are our own,” the king continues. “I will soon answer to God for my sins, but you are young and have many years ahead of you. I pray you reflect on how to make better use of them.”</p>
<p><em>We will not speak like this again,</em> Aethelwold realizes as he watches Alfred make his way to the door. “Uncle,” he says.</p>
<p>Alfred pauses and waits for him to speak. All at once he is a child again, practicing his letters with ink-stained hands under his uncle’s watchful gaze, never quite able to form them to his satisfaction—forever lacking in one way or another.</p>
<p>“Will you look?”</p>
<p>Alfred presses his lips together but does not move. He watches in silence as Aethelwold fumbles at the knot of the bandage with shaking hands. It takes him longer than it should; his fingers are clumsy and the effort makes his head spin, but finally the linen comes loose and he gingerly pulls it away from the blackened skin underneath with a hiss. Someday soon he will have to see it for himself, but not today. Not yet.</p>
<p>“I would know something, Lord,” he whispers. “If a man is mutilated in this life, will he appear mutilated before his maker?”</p>
<p>Alfred does not flinch or avert his gaze, and if he feels any regret or horror at what he has done he shows no trace of it in his face. When he speaks, his tone is detached, emotionless. “I do not know,” he says steadily. “But I am looking.”</p>
<p>“Men will praise you for showing Christian mercy towards me, or else call you weak for letting me live,” Aethelwold says. “I know you better than that. You handed me the rope so that I can fashion the noose myself.”</p>
<p>The king walks away without a word.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Once, he heard a dead man speak in Mercia. The Danes cut the throat of a man they claimed was a thief and tossed him aside and then he saw a corpse break through the soil, fingers clawing at the sky. <em>You, Aethelwold, shall be king, </em>he said.</p>
<p>Later, they told him it was a trick. There was no dead man. <em>The Danes lied,</em> they said, <em>they told you what you wanted to hear and like a fool you believed it; how can you believe anything a pagan says?</em> Afterwards, the corpse went home to his family, where he washed away the dirt from the grave and ate the meal his wife brought him and then he slept in his own bed. Yet when all was said and done, there was indeed a dead man—the thief, with his throat cut, left lying in the grass to rot.</p>
<p>You would think that is the end of the story, and perhaps it is so. Or perhaps not. Perhaps while the Dane-slayer sheaths his sword in satisfaction and walks away without looking back, leaving a would-be king to bleed out in the forests of Cynebaldetun—perhaps in Mercia, the thief stands up on skeleton legs. He does not speak, for there is nothing left to be said. But perhaps he blinks and regards the changed world through a single glinting eye. Perhaps he takes one trembling step forward, and then another. And perhaps from there he stumbles on to Aegelsbure, to Tettanhall, to Wealas, to Wintanceaster, where he joins the growing masses of the dead: blank faces turned up to the heavens, thin hands outstretched, aching to be reborn.</p>
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